The Israeli-based Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se) has demonstrated that British taxpayers continue to pay for Palestinian educational materials despite the fact that pupils are routinely taught incitement, hatred of Israel and glorification of terrorism, according to a Jewish News report. For example, as recently as September last year, Palestinian school students studying under the auspices of the PA as well as in UNRWA (United Nations Relief Work Agency) schools in Judea, Samaria and Gaza were still learning maths by adding up the number of ‘martyrs’, including those who have led suicide bombings on buses and shopping centres.
In the last five years Britain has spent an estimated £105 million on Palestinian education professionals, including on the salaries of teachers who write the textbooks, but it does not monitor the content of those textbooks or the views of those writing them, despite the fact that the funds Britain transfers are officially contingent on “curriculum reform” which requires the PA to take action against “incitement to violence, including addressing allegations of incitement in the educational curriculum”.
In the past Britain has claimed that the PA indeed instigated “curriculum reform” even while admitting that it had not reviewed the contents of the curriculum. Despite this the current Middle East Minister James Cleverly told Labour Friends of Israel chair Steve McCabe last November: “We continue to judge that the PA is demonstrating a credible commitment to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s partnership principles.”
Britain also insists that “UK aid does not pay for textbooks in the Occupied Palestinian Territories”, a line critics call “civil service speak”. An official spokesman for the FCDO told Jewish News: “The UK government strongly condemns all forms of violence. We have repeatedly raised concerns regarding allegations of incitement to violence in the Palestinian Authority’s curriculum at the highest levels, and successfully lobbied our European partners to commission an independent review into these textbooks.” The review was apparently to be undertaken by a specialist educational body, the Georg Eckert Institute in Germany, but the Palestinians have in the meantime criticized the “attacks and slander of the Palestinian curriculum”, stating in a press release that : “The ministry will remain invincible against these attempts, calling [on] the civil society institutions and the Palestinian people to defend the national curriculum with all their might.”
THANKS SO MUCH,, IT MEANS THE WORLD TO US IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMES
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